BRM Reviews the 10/1/2020 Dynamite

[Big Red Machine]

DARBY ALLIN VIDEO- bad
Okay. We get it. He falls off of things for fun. Also, having some random dude do your talking for you is weird.

RICKY STARKS vs. DARBY ALLIN- 7.25/10
Taz is on commentary. I kind of expected him to be managing Starks.
This was a great match, and it was really nice to see these guys deliver in a match that doesn’t involve someone higher on the card. The only real misstep was in the execution of the double run-in. The idea of doing it was good (I didn’t realize that Will Hobbs was the same size as Brian Cage), but the way they brawled to the back and went down the tunnel in a headlock was extremely hokey.


DASHA GONZALEZ INTERVIEWS CODY- atrocious
Cody starts waxing poetical. He says that “the reason we all shake hands is because we need each other” and that “the marquee has two names on it. It’s you versus somebody else.” I call kayfabe bullsh*t. First of all, I don’t think the “shake everyone’s hand when you get to the locker room” rule is a kayfabe thing, and there’s a reason for that: Because we don’t want two people who hate each other’s guts to be shaking hands.
Secondly, the idea that the wrestlers draw a house together has never been the idea in kayfabe. The idea in kayfabe is that you try to win the matches, and the more matches you win, the more money you get and the more opportunities you get. Yes, you’re trying to talk people into the arena, but it’s not a cooperative effort.
From that, Cody somehow transitioned into being ashamed that he lost the title in three minutes. Then he says that he got a call from Hollywood and took it and he felt like nothing compared to them because he lost the title in three minutes. I’m sorry… wasn’t the reason he was gone supposed to be that he was injured? That was definitely the premise of Dasha’s question.
Now he’s talking about how he can’t be the best because he’s not a champion. That’s fine and all, but I for one was confused as f*ck when he talked about the “Full Metal Champ,” and became even more confused when he said this person’s name was “Hikuru Shida.” Yeah. He got the World Women’s Champion’s name wrong. Cody said that only someone who is a singles champion in AEW can claim to be the best wrestler in the company, but I think it should actually be one of four people: the three singles champions, and the person with the best record. Isn’t that point of the records? To keep track of how often the wrestlers win and lose?
Eventually got to Brodie Lee and trailed off without mentioning his name in a pathetic “look at how artsy I’m being!” way. Dasha then asked Cody if he would accept Brodie Lee’s challenge to a dog collar match… and Cody broke into another f*cking grand speech.
He told us all that “the optics are very important” in wrestling and brought up “the optics of a match that dangerous. That bloody. That violent.” He says that as an EVP, his answer is no. Then he turns around and leaves. He gets to the top of the ramps and then comes back and takes the mic and says “’no’ as in ‘no regrets’” and starts ranting and raving about how “we don’t come out the same” from this match and stuff like that. It was TERRIBLE.
Sh*t like this is what irritates me so much about Cody. A normal reaction in a situation like Cody’s would have been to cut an angry promo saying that he accepts the dog collar match no matter how dangerous it is because he wants his title back, he wants revenge on Brodie Lee for injuring him and pushing him off the stretcher, and revenge on the Dark Order for both mocking him and especially for assaulting his family and closest friends.
This wasn’t that. This was a scene from Cody’s one-man play, entitled Cody Rhodes: MEGASTAR, starring Cody Rhodes. Or possibly Calculon. It’s hard to tell from the self-indulgent overacting and speechifying.
(Or, if you want to be more cynical, it was Cody writing a promo where he did a stupid, pointless swerve just for the sake of justifying the a part of the promo where he could tease a crisis of confidence because he could use that to talk about all of the big stars like Snoop Dogg and Rosario Dawson that he got to rub shoulders with when Hollywood called him).
Then Brodie Lee came out to brawl with Cody, and IMMEDIATELY security came out and the wrestlers all jumped the guardrail to break it up. Funny how that never happens during the many various beat-downs we’ve seen over the past year. Making this even worse is the fact that most of the people holding Brodie Lee back are members of the Dark Order! Shouldn’t they be stopping people from holding their leader back, or maybe attacking Cody? They know by now that disobeying him only winds up in them getting punished, so why are doing something that clearly contradicts his will?
Once things had calmed down, with the Dark Order having Brodie relatively clam on the outside and everyone else holding Cody back, Brandi decided to come out and start sh*t up again by diving onto the Dark Order. Of course, it wasn’t the whole Dark Order out there. Anna Jay wasn’t out there. That was because if she was out there, Brandi would have had to dive on her and thus she wouldn’t have been backstage waiting for her cue to come out and attack Brandi. And, of course, instantly, here come two female wrestlers to break them up. There were no women trying to break the male wrestlers up, of course, because that would be silly. No, they have to wait for women to be fighting.
Once those two were broken up, Nyla Rose hopped the guardrail and attacked the redhead who was holding Brandi back. I have no idea why.
Brodie Lee left, but then ran back to brawl with Cody some more. The Dark Order came to pull him off again. He went back yet again and they pulled him off again. This was an obnoxiously choreographed PRO WRESTLING PULL-APART BRAWL™. And yes, the fact that AEW so rarely does these but did it for this match when there was basically no reason for Brodie to come out in the first place (Cody accepted the match. Brodie already got what he wanted) adds to that.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS FTR & TULLY BLANCHARD- bad
FTR cut meh heel promos on SCU and the Young Bucks. Their comments on the Bucks were in response to Tony Schiavone saying that “everyone is asking ‘what about the Young Bucks?’” in terms of title challengers. What everyone should be asking is why AEW agreed to this ridiculous deal with FTR where FTR get to hand-pick their own challengers, get lower time limits, and get paid as if they won in the case of a draw.
Then, out of nowhere, Matt Jackson showed up and superkicked Tony Schiavone for absolutely no reason. As he left, FTR flat out asked “why didn’t you kick us?” and wondered if it was because the Bucks were scared of them. There was no refutation of this, so that’s the best answer we have.
This whole Young Bucks turn has been SOOOOOOOOO dumb. Why would you turn them heel in the build-up to a match against a heel FTR? I’m actually at the point right now where I might vote for the Bucks as the worst bookers of the year, because AEW’s tag division has been booked SOOOOOO poorly, despite easily being the best in all of wrestling. Yeah, the WWE main roster booking has been 99% sh*t, but at least those people have an entire company to book and five hours of important TV a week. The Bucks have one division to book in a company that gets a total of three hours. Per capita, I think they might be worse.

DASHA GONZALEZ INTERVIEWS SCU- passable
As they left, Scorpio Sky had a stare-down with Shawn Spears. I really hope we don’t get a f*ck finish.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: FTR(c) (w/Tully Blanchard) vs. SCU (w/Christopher Daniels)- 7/10
Adam Page was on commentary for this match. He got a graphic that called him “very unprepared” where some fact about the wrestler would normally be. Why is someone in the production truck f*cking with Page?
On commentary, we got the following exchange:
Excalibur: Last time we had Kenny Omega on commentary and he made it pretty clear he was focusing on his singles career.
Page: Did he, though?
Taz: Yeah. He flat out said it.

I laughed my ass off at that, but that’s not a good thing for AEW because I shouldn’t be laughing at the babyface coming off like a delusional idiot. Page’s argument was that despite saying he wants to focus on his singles career, Kenny hasn’t actually had singles match yet. And that might be true but, that’s Kenny’s fault. It’s AEW’s fault for offering Kenny tag matches and not singles matches. Twice they have offered Kenny a tag match, and twice now Kenny has told them no. Kenny has done everything in his power to show that he is done with tag team wrestling.
Actually… maybe he hasn’t done everything in his power. He’s an EVP of company. Can’t he book his own matches? We saw that Cody had booking power early on in the Lance Archer feud, so shouldn’t Kenny (and Page, and the Bucks, and Brandi) have it as well?
This was a great match, but I found FTR being booked like basic heels who can’t win without cheating to be very frustrating. If you’re trying to build to a dream match with the Bucks or Lucha Bros. you need to book FTR strongly, not like guys who can’t win without cheating.

They announced a #1 contendership tournament with the finals at Full Gear. Three of the men in the tournament will be Rey Fenix, Jungle Boy, and Kenny Omega. Adam Page looked very sad about this.

ISAIAH KASSIDY (w/Marq Quen & Matt Hardy) vs. CHRIS JERICHO (w/the Inner Circle)- 6.75/10
Jericho got sent to the outside and was attacked by Doctor Luther. I can’t imagine that the referee didn’t see this, and yet there was no DQ.
Kassidy had a good showing but lost.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
The Inner Circle tried to attack the babyfaces but were fought off. They wound up o the outside and Jericho and Luther started fighting. Serpentico is an ally of Dr. Luther, apparently. And then the announcers told us that they were called the “Chaos Project” and are an undefeated tag team. This show has been on the air for one year now and this is at least the third time I remember being told that a certain team with either undefeated or on a big winning streak and being totally shocked by it. That’s not good. This all felt like it happened because Jericho wants to wrestle Dr. Luther for his 30th Anniversary Celebration next week rather than for any natural reason.

KIP SABIAN & MIRO VIDEO- snore
Rusev wants to give Sabian a great bachelor party but can’t because of COVID. Some dude overhears him talking and offers to help. I don’t understand how they expect anyone to give a sh*t about this.

FTR INTERRUPT DASHA’S INTERVIEW WITH THE GOOF PATROL- good
This was fine build for the eventual tag title between FTR and Best Friends.

ORANGE CASSIDY (w/Best Friends) vs. 10 (w/John Silver, Colt Cabana, & 5)- 2/10
We started off with Silver being a clown. The match was short and had too much goof from the goofs and dorks on the outside.

MJF & THE INNER CIRCLE IN THE INNER CIRCLE’S DRESSING ROOM- bad
This whole MJF/Jericho thing is just so boring. Okay. We get it. They’re pretending they like each other but they really don’t. Why are we building up to another heel vs. heel thing? And why do we have to do it in such a goofy manner?

RED VELVET vs. DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD (w/Rebel/Reba)- 1.5/10
This should have been a squash. Instead it was too even and went too long. Britt locked Red Velvet in the Lockjaw after the match.

EDDIE KINGSTON PROMO- bad
He gave a completely unintelligible reason for why he is getting to pick Moxley’s challenger tonight. Something about Eddie not tapping out last week (which shouldn’t matter because it was a referee stoppage) but also accusing other people of sucking up to Tony Khan? Whatever. Also, he had Lucha Bros. threaten Bryce Remsburg, but Moxley came out before they could do anything, leading to the…

AEW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: John Moxley(c) vs. The Butcher (w/Eddie Kingston & Lucha Bros.)- 7.5/10
Excalibur explained that Moxley was so angry about getting attacked last week that he offered to put the title up against any member of Kingston’s crew. That makes a lot more sense than however Kingston phrased it.
The match was a lot better than I was expecting. The story was Butcher’s strength advantage over Moxley, as well as Butcher working the knee. Moxley won clean.


This was a good episode of AEW in the ring, but the stories are just so messed up that I can’t call the show good.



STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Jim Ross thinks that an Oklahoma Roll and a Magistral Cradle are the same thing.

[NWK2000]

KIP SABIAN & MIRO VIDEO- snore
Rusev wants to give Sabian a great bachelor party but can’t because of COVID. Some dude overhears him talking and offers to help. I don’t understand how they expect anyone to give a sh*t about this.

The man was Billy Mitchell. He's known as one as the world record holder for the Donkey Kong arcade game, highest score in the world. He even has his own hot sauce. The sheer randomness of this has me intrigued.

[Big Red Machine]

KIP SABIAN & MIRO VIDEO- snore
Rusev wants to give Sabian a great bachelor party but can’t because of COVID. Some dude overhears him talking and offers to help. I don’t understand how they expect anyone to give a sh*t about this.

The man was Billy Mitchell. He's known as one as the world record holder for the Donkey Kong arcade game, highest score in the world. He even has his own hot sauce. The sheer randomness of this has me intrigued.

Well... you're the one.

[NWK2000]

KIP SABIAN & MIRO VIDEO- snore
Rusev wants to give Sabian a great bachelor party but can’t because of COVID. Some dude overhears him talking and offers to help. I don’t understand how they expect anyone to give a sh*t about this.

The man was Billy Mitchell. He's known as one as the world record holder for the Donkey Kong arcade game, highest score in the world. He even has his own hot sauce. The sheer randomness of this has me intrigued.

Well... you're the one.

Did you expect any less?

[Big Red Machine]

The man was Billy Mitchell. He's known as one as the world record holder for the Donkey Kong arcade game, highest score in the world. He even has his own hot sauce. The sheer randomness of this has me intrigued.

Well... you're the one.

Did you expect any less?

A little bit. I expected you to not have any idea who this goof was.

[Thelone]

Cody the non-binary wrestler cut another ridiculously pompous promo to hear himself talk for a while. For a guy who's been trying to be his own man since he left WWE, he sure is becoming some weird Dusty tribute character mixed with modern stupid bullshit. Can't wait for his next totally original promo called Tough Era.

Shocking how the Bucks (and Omega) booking stuff is horrendous. I'm not sure why people thought they would be great at it, but they aren't in the slightest.

This Omega/Page deal is so dead at this point because they just kept dragging it on and on.

"""Legend""" Luther is there to raucous chirping.

This not-Rusev thing is terrible. I get that the guy probably didn't want to be Generic Heel Foreigner anymore and I guess he's a good friend with Penelope Ford's valet, but who could possibly care about this bachelor party shit? Yeah, you don't wanna go full TNA and give him all the belts after five seconds, but you might as well have signed No Way Jose if this is all you could come up with then.